Ji moved faster than the eye could follow.
After lapping the solar system, she accelerated toward Lopo and delivered a decisive blow to his jaw.
The impact knocked his jaw completely out of place.
It was at that exact moment that Lopo regained the ability to move.
He backdashed, flinging the body double away from his arm. His remaining hand rose toward his damaged jaw as he tried to recover his bearings.
The poison had worn off.
Ja sensed the chaotic energy swirling up again.
He immediately darted forward and cut off Lopo's legs.
Then he looked toward Ji.
"Take his head now!"
The command came too late.
Lopo had already healed his jaw.
He whispered two words.
"RCT: Chaos Reconning."
Ji's expression changed.
She recognized the danger in the energy gathering around Lopo. Whatever the others believed they were accomplishing, they had allowed the situation to reach a point where the next few moments could determine the outcome of the entire confrontation.
"Everyone!" she shouted. "Attack him! Use the binds I gave you earlier! Right now, or we're going to lose!"
The gathered beings reacted.
Ja sensed a massive spike in the residual energy bleeding off Lopo. Then the energy began to condense.
He moved immediately.
Ja dashed in and impaled Lopo with the Sword of Truth, attempting to stagger him and interrupt whatever he was preparing. Before Lopo could respond, Ja wrapped the special binds Ji had distributed around his forearm and the legs he had severed.
He pulled.
The binds tightened around Lopo's body.
For an instant, it seemed as though the group might finally restrain him.
Then Lopo grew angrier.
He seized Ja and slung him away.
The movement snapped the gathered beings out of their hesitation.
They attacked together, using suppression-based abilities and the binds Ji had provided. Their intention was to prevent Lopo from completing his technique and subdue him before his growing power could overwhelm them.
Ja recovered and returned to the fight.
He grabbed his bind, wrapped it around Lopo's arm, and pulled with everything he could muster.
The result was catastrophic.
A large section of Lopo's torso came away along with the bound arm and the severed legs.
Ji's eyes widened.
"No!"
Her voice cut through the commotion.
"You'll just empower him!"
But the warning came too late.
A tremendous gust of chaotic energy erupted from Lopo.
The blast swallowed the battlefield, blinding the gathered beings and sending them flying in every direction. The pressure was overwhelming, and the energy continued to surge through the area.
When the dust settled, almost everyone had been thrown aside.
Only Ji remained standing.
She looked across the battlefield at the people who had failed to heed her warning.
Then she made her decision.
Ji fully manifested her IP—her Inertia Kit, specifically its speed-amplification capabilities.
Her presence shifted.
She moved so quickly that the others could not properly perceive her actions. She blitzed Lopo, crossed the distance between the scattered fighters, and seized the binds from the people she considered useless idiots.
She had given them those binds for a reason.
They had used them without understanding the consequences.
Now she would use them herself.
Ji gathered every bind she could recover and wrapped them around Lopo.
Then she wrapped them around herself.
The binds tightened.
Their purpose had never been limited to restraining an opponent. They could bond those caught within them while sealing them together, preventing one from simply abandoning the other.
Ji had chosen to use that property deliberately.
She was tired of Lopo leaving her.
Tired of him disappearing whenever his own pursuits demanded his attention.
Tired of being left to deal with the consequences of his absence while he carried on as though the people he had abandoned would simply remain where he left them.
If she couldn't make him stay willingly, she would make leaving impossible.
The seal activated.
For a moment, the gathered beings watched the two figures at its center.
Then Ji and Lopo vanished.
They did not simply disappear behind a cloud of smoke or retreat through a portal.
They seemingly blipped out of reality.
And the battlefield was left behind without them.
Lopo materialized in an unfamiliar world.
He immediately turned toward Ji, anger radiating from him as he attempted to use his abilities.
Nothing happened.
He tried again.
Still nothing.
His expression hardened.
Ji stood nearby, watching him.
"There's nothing special about us here," she said. "We'll probably wither away and die in here. But at least we have each other."
Lopo stared at her.
The statement only made him angrier.
He turned and began running.
If the seal had taken his abilities away, perhaps he could find a way around it. Perhaps there was somewhere in this world where its effects would weaken, or some boundary he could cross.
But as he continued, he realized something.
No matter where he went, Ji would be right behind him.
The binds had bonded them together as well as sealing them. He could not simply run far enough to leave her behind.
Ji had intended it that way.
She was done watching him disappear.
And now, whether he liked it or not, Lopo would have to remain with her.
Lopo turned back toward Ji, still trying to understand what she had done.
Then she lifted her shirt and lowered the waistband of her skirt and leggings enough to reveal the curve of a baby bump extending from her pelvis toward her upper torso.
Lopo stared.
For a moment, he seemed unable to comprehend what he was seeing.
His anger gave way to shock, then disbelief, then a strange sort of awe.
And then he passed out.
When he regained consciousness, Ji was waiting for him.
She began explaining everything.
The pregnancy.
The children.
Mama D.
The binds.
The people who had helped her track him down.
The plan to subdue him.
Everything Lopo had missed while he was gone.
Ji explained that the people of her species and planet possessed a reproductive ability that allowed them to delay birth, in a manner somewhat comparable to the unusual reproductive adaptations of kangaroos and seahorses.
That was why she could be pregnant despite the hundreds of millennia that had passed since she and Lopo last saw each other.
From Lopo's perspective, their separation had been immense. He could not understand how she could now be carrying his children.
Ji explained that the truth was more complicated than he imagined.
When Lopo vanished, she eventually discovered that she was pregnant. But during his absence, the evil witch known as Mama D stole her children.
Ji fought to get them back.
What she discovered afterward was worse than she could have imagined.
Mama D had consumed the children to rejuvenate herself.
The revelation had sent Ji into a mental spiral. She had struggled to process what had happened and what it meant for her future.
But she eventually realized that, because she had not yet given birth, she might be able to recover what had been lost in another way.
She used the remaining DNA and cultivated body doubles to recreate the children within her womb.
It was a process not entirely unlike the technique she had used during her fight with Kiosk.
She had managed to recreate their bodies.
But something essential was missing.
Their souls.
Ji had not given birth because she wanted her children to be whole. She did not want to bring them into the world while they remained incomplete.
Lopo listened in silence.
The children he had never known about had been stolen from their mother. They had been consumed by someone seeking to preserve her own youth. And Ji had been forced to find a way to recreate them, carrying them again while searching for the means to restore what was missing.
All of this had happened while he was absent.
He stared at Ji, struggling to understand how much time had passed for her and how much of her life had been shaped by his disappearance.
Then he noticed the scar on the right side of her face.
He asked how she had gotten it.
Ji's eyes widened.
Her expression shifted abruptly, and she recoiled in horror as she began to recount what had happened.
Lopo noticed her reaction.
For once, he did not press her for an answer.
"All right," he said, softening his voice. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."
Ji hesitated.
"Okay," she muttered.
She left the subject of the scar alone and continued telling him about the children.
She explained how she had cultivated their bodies, how she had used the remaining DNA, and why she had refused to give birth while their souls were absent.
Lopo stared at her.
He had no immediate answer.
For all his power and all the knowledge he had accumulated during his pursuit of chaos, he had never imagined returning to find himself confronted with something like this.
Eventually, Lopo asked the question that had been weighing on him.
"How are you pregnant?"
He looked at her, still struggling to reconcile the situation with his understanding of time.
"We haven't seen each other since I went off-grid. It's been hundreds of millennia."
Ji explained the reproductive ability of her species again, making it clear that the delay was possible because she had not yet given birth.
Lopo listened.
Then he asked about the children.
Were they the originals?
Or were they entirely new beings?
Ji's eyes widened again.
This time, the question struck a different nerve.
She looked away before explaining that the children she carried were not the original individuals. They were cultivated from her body doubles and the children's remaining DNA.
Their bodies had been recreated.
Their souls had not.
She had not given birth because she wanted them to be complete first.
Lopo was stunned.
He knew something about souls that might help.
He knew there was a way to address the problem.
But he could do nothing while they remained sealed.
The very binds Ji had created to keep him from leaving prevented him from using his abilities to help their children. Whatever solution he understood, he could not reach it from within this dimension.
He could not promise Ji that he could fix everything while he was unable to act.
So he said nothing about what he knew.
He did not want to give her false hope.
Ji had already endured too much, and Lopo had no way to guarantee that his knowledge would help them while they remained trapped.
He kept the possibility to himself.
For the first time since his ascension had begun, Lopo found himself in a situation where power was not the immediate answer.
He had pursued chaos because he wanted to reach beyond the limits of existence. He had spent hundreds of millennia following a path he believed would lead him to the ultimate embodiment of chaos.
That pursuit had brought cosmic beings to his doorstep.
It had led to a confrontation, a battle, and a technique that had left the others scrambling to restrain him.
And now he was here.
Sealed in a world where he could not use his abilities, bonded to the woman he had left behind, and faced with the knowledge that his children had been stolen, consumed, and reconstructed without their souls.
Ji had sealed him because she was tired of being abandoned.
She had wanted to make sure he could not simply disappear again.
And now they were both trapped with the consequences of that decision.
She had a goal: to make their children whole.
He knew a possible solution existed.
But he could not reach it.
For now, there was no war to fight, no cosmic opponent to overpower, and no path forward that he could simply force open.
There was only Ji.
And the truth of everything that had happened while he was gone.
For once, Lopo could not escape the consequences of his absence.